


crash.

by Pseudthisyafucks (collettephinz)



Series: A Million Miles [2]
Category: Youtube RPF
Genre: Alternate narrative, Depression, High School AU, M/M, Self Harm, alternate POV, brave new world theme, felix's terrible coping techniques, grotesque use of italics for effect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 14:42:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12961605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/collettephinz/pseuds/Pseudthisyafucks
Summary: Felix's POV of the day he saw Seán/Jack again for the first time in two years.





	crash.

**Author's Note:**

> inspired entirely by the song _crash_ by EDEN
> 
> no beta or anything sorry if it sucks just couldn't get it out of my head
> 
>  
> 
> **it's been a few years and i've moved on**  
>  couldn't make it disappear, oh i tried so hard to be strong  
> but i grew up today and faced that i'm not just lonely  
> don't feel much better but i guess that it's a start

Felix opened his eyes and stared into his white ceiling. The familiar bumps and whirls loomed above him. He couldn’t find the same faces he’d always been able to name, nor the comforting shapes he’d known so intimately as a kid. This ceiling had been his first friend since coming to this country. He remembered lying in a different bed and getting to know this ceiling better than his own hands. 

The weight of the roof above him felt foreboding. He didn’t want to get out of bed. He genuinely couldn’t, to an extent. There was a heavy weight in his chest that kept him from so much as lifting his head off the pillow. It was a lumpy pillow. Not the one that he actually liked. The pillow he preferred to sleep with lied on the floor beside the bed. He’d put it down there last night.

His alarm suddenly went off. Felix shut his eyes and took in the shrill drone of the alarm with a long, deep, letting his body sink deeper into the mattress. His own mind pinned him down. He didn’t want to get up. 

The alarm became less and less bearable, though. Felix lifted his hand, but the movement stalled above him. He stared at his hand as it hovered in midair. He didn’t think anything about. Didn’t see anything more than his own hand. His limb felt lighter when it was vertical. His fingertips tingled with sleep and blood loss. He looked at the way the light through his blinds made his skin seem even more pale than it actually was. Sometimes, he felt like his entire body was translucent, along with everything else. 

Was the alarm getting louder?

_He didn’t want to get up._

Felix felt like there was something chaining him down, refusing to let him lift his body. Maybe it was the weight in his chest. Felix turned his head back up to the ceiling and stared at the bumps and whirls that should have been familiar. When did he forget how to see the unexplained in the world? When did he lose his creativity? _Where did his imagination go?_

Ireland.

His imagination left for Ireland. 

Felix wondered if he’d grown up to be exactly what that boy had wanted. 

Picturing a fleeting smile that Felix had tried his best not to remember was the lash against his back that got him out of bed. He focused on putting one foot in front of the other and went to the bathroom. He was cold, but he didn’t want to turn the heat on. He stood in front of his bathroom mirror and glanced for only a moment to see if he’d need to wear glasses today to hide the sleepless bruises. 

_His gaze was caught, though, by his own eyes. He could see something in himself. Something trembling and tired. Something that stirred aimlessly without meaning, endless and wasted. It was something that walked in aimless circles. He remembered a book he’d read. He didn’t remember anything but the end. The protagonist had hung himself and spun listlessly in circles with the rope around his neck, facing all four directions. East, South, West, North. Perpetual motion without purpose._

Felix tore himself from the mirror and turned on the shower, stripping mechanically. He brushed his teeth in the shower and barely felt the water on his skin. A cut on his hip strung. He ignored it. He washed his hair and dried off with an uncomfortable, scratchy towel, taking care to not be gentle. Felix pulled on a sweater he couldn’t remember ever buying and took his phone from the nightstand. The alarm was still screaming. He’d forgotten to shut it off, living with the jarring sound like it was normal. Belatedly, it occurred to him to shut it off. 

Brad’s name was across his screen with a text message. He wasn’t going to bother it. Brad was probably just asking him what was wrong after finally hearing the three calls he’d missed from Felix last night. Felix’s empty house had felt more like an emergency than a comfort, but he was fine now. No point in reliving the voicemails he’d left on Brad’s phone. 

Felix put his phone in his pocket and grabbed his car keys. The truck in the driveway was probably cold. He’d need a jacket. Felix’s eyes strayed back to his closet as he thought of how frigid his fingertips would feel if he didn’t.

Felix left the house without a jacket and without eating. The idea of going through the effort of either task was just too dull on his mind. He got into his truck and pretended the creak of the door was just something from the weather. 

_He was safe in this car. He was safe. Felix held tightly to the steering wheel and psyched himself up for starting the engine as he did every day. He ignored the phantom pain in his collar bone and just below. He started the car and pulled out of the driveway, heading to Brad’s house on autopilot so he wouldn’t have to actually think about driving over the asphalt in this fucking death trap. He lost time and pulled up the dirt road before he thought he feasibly could._

Brad was standing outside of the dilapidated house with his arms crossed over his chest. He looked very unhappy. Felix grimaced and put the car in park further away from the house than he normally would have, and sat. If Brad wanted to give him shit, then he’d have to work for it. He’d have to walk. Brad looked pissed off. He probably thought Felix was being childish.

Brad practically stomped across the lawn and knocked harshly on the window. Felix didn’t move at first, just stared definitely through the glass at the older boy. _Putting off the inevitable felt deceivingly like control._ Brad knocked again, and only then did Felix crank down his window. 

“Wanna explain the shit you said to me last night over the phone?” Brad demanded. 

“Not particularly.”

Brad scowled. _“If you think all of this shit is getting too much for you, then maybe you should have left Michael in that fucking basement.”_

Felix didn’t let himself react even though that felt like a fucking knife. He hadn’t meant what he’d said last night. It had been a shitty time and he’d said and thought and done things he’d known he was going to regret. He just didn’t usually call someone in the middle of it. He’d know to never do it again. It wasn’t like he was going to get the comfort and help he’d been practically begging for. 

“How is he?” Felix asked after a long moment. 

“Absolute shite,” Brad replied with bite. “Because my mood was down the gutter, and that brought Em down, which brought him down. You can’t just do this shit, Felix. It’s a domino affect.”

_God forbid Felix ever be weak. God forbid he ever buckle under the pressure. God forbid he be anything but the perfect adult everyone else needed him to be. God fucking forbid he feel things and act like the child he actually is._

Felix clenched his jaw and gripped the steering wheel. “Is he on his way out?”

Brad hit the body of the car in frustration. Felix would’ve told him to knock it off if this truck already wasn’t a piece of garbage. “He’ll be out,” Brad snapped. He was so angry with Felix. “Should I be expecting anymore bullshit messages tonight? Or can I trust you enough to turn off my phone again?”

Felix rolled his window back up. Brad left. Michael came out a few minutes later. He was looking at the toes of his shoes as he walked and didn’t say anything when he got in the truck. Felix drove away from that house and tried to reconcile his anger. He couldn’t actually blame Brad for being angry. If Brad had left messages like that on Felix’s phone, Felix would have been upset too. But he probably would’ve been a little more gentle. A little more attentive. A little more like he cared. 

Fuck, that wasn’t fair. Brad was under a lot of pressure. Housing a trauma victim while trying to deal with his wedding next week had to be a nightmare, especially when the in-laws saw you as a stain. Brad only had so much in him, just like everyone else. It hadn’t been fair of Felix to dump his shit on him out of the blue like he’d done. 

At least Brad hadn’t asked him if he was cold. The absence of a jacket was damning enough.

Felix focused on not focusing. The truck beneath his feet was a beast that pulled him along to where he needed to go. Michael was an unhappy passenger. Was he unhappy? Felix chanced a glance in his peripherals and saw Michael was still staring at his toes. It was odd that he wasn’t smoking. Felix sighed and knew he’d have to bite the bullet. 

“I’m sorry,” Felix said. “For whatever you heard.”

Michael kicked his feet. “It is fine.”

“Nah, it really isn’t.” Felix reached over and popped open the glove compartment. He kept his eyes on the road, though. His grip on the steering wheel became white in an effort to overcompensate for driving with only one hand. “Smoke something, dude. God knows I would if I could.”

“Brad would not talk about what you, you said,” Michael told him as he obediently set to work on medicating. “He was very angry. Did you say something cruel?”

Felix twisted his brow. “Something like that.”

“To him?”

“Not to anyone.”

Michael was watching him. _Felix could feel his eyes on him like fists._ He did his best to act like he wasn’t fazed by it. “Just smoke that shit and promise me you’re not gonna listen to the shit Brad says,” he told Michael. “You don’t need to worry your pretty little head about any of it.”

Michael was still looking at him. “Did… I, did Ken…”

“It wasn’t Ken,” Felix said, shutting that down before this conversation could get anymore painful. “Just. Just a night. A night like any other.” He pulled up in front of the school and waited to let Michael finish his bowl. “You gonna be okay in there?”

“It is just another day,” Michael said. “A day like any other.”

Felix felt a smile tug unbidden at his lips. The first one in what felt like days. “Fuck you,” he drawled. “Get out of my truck.” Michael grinned at him and hopped out the door. The smile quickly died from Felix’s face, though, as he looked up to the brick building. Students milled about. All of them looked like they were somewhat intrinsically aware. Felix stayed in the truck. He didn’t want to be around them any longer than he had to. Maybe Michael was getting better at avoiding the stares and the looks, but Felix couldn’t help but remember what he used to be. 

_People used to like him. They used to fight over having him in group projects and they would choose him first in volleyball. He’d be asked to school dances and no one would be mad at him when he inevitably turned them down in favor of one special and specific person. He used to be a shining light in the eyes of his teachers. He used to be someone people were proud to have a class with._

All of that had left for Ireland, though.

Felix slumped in the drivers seat and stared at nothing. His steering wheel was indented with the force of his grip. The speedometer was stuck at 45 miles per hour. The gear shift handle was worn down and bent at an odd angle. Felix wrapped his hand around it and focused on the sensation of the cold metal against his skin. Holding an object in his hand made his mind ease up at the edges. _There was still that weight, though. That chain in his chest._ Felix let out a heavy sigh. His lungs felt tired. Drawing in enough air was too much effort, so he was always on the edge of suffocation. Maybe one of these days he’d forget long enough and collapse.

The bell rang and Felix dragged himself out of the truck. Fuck, he was cold. The sweater just wasn’t enough. Not for October. He walked to the school after just barely remembering to grab his backpack. He knew he was already late, as that had been the final bell. Felix stepped into the school and kept his head down. He passed Mark and denied himself the urge to ask about the sheet music they were to be sight-reading today. Mark was with his friends. They wouldn’t want to hear his voice. 

Felix passed Michael’s first class on the long way to his own and frowned when he didn’t see the Austrian at his desk. He quickly changed course and went down the hall, heading for the lower level boy’s bathroom. Felix brushed past a few late students. They all tended to look similar. One was a girl with purple hair, the other was a boy with green. People who didn’t care about attendance tended to have a certain look to theirselves. 

Felix ducked into the bathroom and called out Michael’s name gently. A noise of surprise sounded from one of the stalls. Felix sighed and rapped his knuckles on it. “Dude,” he said. “Everything okay?” Michael didn’t use public restrooms for their intended use. He hated the vulnerability in public. Felix definitely could not fault him for that ounce of paranoia. 

“I, I am fine,” Michael said hesitantly. “I just…” There was a moment’s pause. “I needed a moment to breathe. I am sorry.”

Felix waited for further explanation, but Michael didn’t continue. It looked like it was going to be one of those days. A day like any other. Felix sighed again and thunked his head on the stall door. “Michael,” he said in a low voice. “Do you need help?”

“No help,” Michael denied. “Just a moment. A moment of silence.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“… Yes.”

 _Felix didn’t let that hurt._ He nodded, mostly to himself, and pulled back. “I’ll see you before lunch,” he told Michael. “Let me know if you need anything.” He knew Michael wouldn’t. Sometimes Michael needed to shrug off everyone that mattered so he could focus on himself. It never helped, but Felix couldn’t deny him without making things worse. He’d just have to suck it up and let Michael isolate himself. 

Felix made to leave the bathroom with too much on his mind. Now his thoughts were heavy enough to match his chest. Those chains weighing him down were starting to be annoying. He wished he could shrug them off. Maybe even give them to someone else. _Someone who deserved it._ Felix scowled to himself. Because then again, who was to say that he didn’t deserve them himself?

He left the bathroom and stopped when he saw someone slumped against the wall, just outside. It was the guy with the bright green hair he’d passed earlier. His torso was heaving with what had to be asthma or some form of panic. Felix wanted to keep walking, but he couldn’t very well ignore someone who was so obviously in trouble. A glance to the left and right showed no one else was around. Felix hadn’t seen this kid before. There would be no harm in offering help to a stranger. 

“Hey, man, you okay?” he asked, approaching the kid cautiously. Whoever he was, he didn’t look up. Felix wet his lips, a little nervous. He felt like he was an introductory character in a really bad soap opera. Or a horror movie. He decided to call out again, just in case. “Bro?”

The boy looked up, blue eyes meeting more blue, and at first, there was nothing. Felix took in the features of a very handsome boy, with full cheeks and a strong brow. He had a graceful curve to his nose and scruff on his chin. The green looked really good on him. 

Then Felix understood who he was looking at. 

“Seán?” he asked, his voice shaking. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Was this some sort of ghost? What the fuck was with the green? Of all colors, why green? And what was Seán doing here? Why was he back?

For a moment, Felix was afraid. Afraid of everything that had happened since he’d last seen this boy. If this really was Seán, what was he going to do once he learned what Felix had become? What was he going to do when he heard all of the rumors and the bullshit and the whispered words? What was he going to do when he realized Felix’s house was almost as empty as his fucking existence? 

_Seán had been gone for years._

Felix had fucking cried over losing him. And at first, Felix had lived to spite him. He’d kept going with this fake, chipper attitude, pretending that nothing could hurt him, that all those rocks being thrown at him were just toys. He’d done his best to pretend everything was okay, even without his soulmate at his side. He’d pretended he hadn’t had half of his heart taken across the world to fucking Ireland. He’d pretended that he wasn’t missing Seán. The boy he’d loved.

Because Felix had loved him, and he still fucking did. The love he felt for a ghost was the reason why he couldn’t see faces in his ceiling or be someone to be proud of. It was why he couldn’t think about Ken and the reason why he left voicemails on Brad’s phone that he refused to talk about the next day. Loving a ghost had ruined him, loving this fucking boy, who had left him behind, had ruined every inch of him. Forget losing his parents, forget losing his hold on his own thoughts, forget losing his grasp on which way was up. Losing Seán, losing the person who knew him best. That had ruined him far beyond everything else.

And yet now, here he was. Standing in front of Felix with green hair and those endless blue eyes. Felix wondered if he was trying to grow a beard. Felix wanted to say something. He reached out and opened his mouth, ready to say the first thing that would come past his lips. It could be anything.

_What are you doing here?_

_Did you miss me?_

_Are you okay?_

_Why were you on the wall like that?_

_Is green your favorite color now?_

_Did you move back into your old house?_

_Did you see my house?_

_Did you see what’s missing?_

_How long have you been here?_

_How long have you been pretending I’m not here?_

_Did you not know that I’m here?_

_Do you wish I wasn’t here?_

_Do you want me to leave?_

_Do you want me to stay?_

_**Did it hurt?** _

_Did leaving me hurt, Seán?_

But before he could ask any of that, Seán was gone. 

Felix watched his back shrink into the distance down the hall before it registered that he’d actually ran away. A hand wrapped tight around _Felix’s throat. The chains dug into his chest like wire cutting into skin. He felt cold._

He watched Seán disappear from sight, and, for the second time in his life, wondered if he would ever see him again. 

Felix stood there, in that empty hallway. 

_He remembered only the ending to a book he couldn’t recall. The protagonist had hung himself and spun listlessly in circles with the rope around his neck, facing all four directions. East, South, West, North. Perpetual motion without purpose._

Felix was spurred into motion and turned away from where Seán had been. 

If he focused on the weight in his chest long enough, he’d be able to convince himself that Seán had truly been nothing more than a ghost. After all, why would he come back? Why would the world give him anything good? 

No, Seán had been nothing more than a ghost before him. _A ghost whose lips Felix had memorized two years ago, scared and oh-so-young, huddled together underneath a flight of stairs._


End file.
